The Last Word

At the beginning of this chapter, under the title “Excerpt from Murder Beach (Draft 1)” (119), the font and perspective change. The book draft is written in the third person and reflects the perspective of the killer.

In real life, Kane drives to Strand Beach, an area that he is familiar with, and parks in a lot near the off-road path that he will take to the house. There, he vapes and thinks about his first book. When he was nine, his mother paid a vanity press to publish Kane’s book, Propeller Head, which is about a boy named Harry whose head turns into a boat propeller; this allows him to take revenge on his bullies and abusers. Now, as Kane waits to attack Emma, he walks around the town and buys some barbed fishhooks.

The perspective and font shift back to Emma’s point of view, told in the third person. She suspects that Kane is trying to harm her dog with cuts of meat that have sharp objects in them. Emma thinks about the fates of the characters in Kane’s book and contemplates the threats he made while standing at the door.

The narrative shifts back to Kane’s perspective. He describes how Emma has isolated herself. She has a daily ritual of preparing food and water for her dog, then walking down to the beach and into the water. However, she doesn’t go through with her plan, and she doesn’t take the backpack filled with stones. Kane believes that killing Emma will fulfill her wish; he believes that in attacking her, he is merely doing what she wants.

From Emma’s perspective, the motion sensor lights go out, and her cell phone call to the police doesn’t go through. All her devices are now disconnected from the internet. She recalls that the characters in Kane’s book also have trouble finding a cell signal. Emma decides to go through with her plan to go to the motel, but when she finds Laika down on the beach, her dog is eating another cut of meat.

In Murder Beach, Kane describes how he struggled to find a kind of meat that Laika would eat. Chicken breast ended up being the most tempting, but instead of lacing it with fishhooks, he laced it with poison.

From Emma’s perspective, she finds the cut of poisoned meat in Laika’s mouth.

Emma remembers buying rodent poison. She worries about how much Laika has eaten. After escaping from the house and the surrounding area, she plans to induce vomiting to save Laika. When Emma and Laika get into the car, Emma carefully checks the backseat, which is empty.

In Murder Beach, Kane describes disabling her car. He learned how to do this from the interne, and thinks about his talent for researching as a writer. In his online writing group, Kane writes, “In a story, the author is God” (141).

The narrative returns to Emma’s perspective. The car doesn’t start. She remembers that she unplugged and hid a landline phone in the pantry. Emma wonders if she could run to Deek’s house, but she realizes that she is being set up, just like the psych major in Kane’s book. She decides to run back to Jules’s house, not to Deek’s, and makes it without incident. After turning on all the lights, Emma finds the landline phone and realizes that the landline has been cut as well as the Wi-Fi.

In Murder Beach, Kane describes cutting the telephone cables. He has recreated all the tropes that Emma critiqued in her review. However, he didn’t need to isolate her because she has already done that herself. Now, he watches her light a cigarette and look out the windows, and he is surprised that she isn’t cowering in fear.

The narrative returns to Emma’s perspective as she scans the yard for Kane. Then, on the whiteboard, she asks Deek to call the police, but she doesn’t see him in the telescope. Emma grabs a kitchen knife. Her state of grief and suicidal urges prevent her from being afraid of Kane.

Emma thinks about the bird that hit the window when she posted her review. She compares this instance with a memory of a bird hitting a window when she and Shawn first decided to have kids. The bird that more recently perished was a sapsucker. Because Kane this word in his reply to her review, she believes that he threw the bird at her. Now, she turns off all the lights and uses Jules’s Polaroid camera to take pictures of the yard. She discovers that Kane is just beyond the motion sensors for the outdoor lights. He moves before she can take another picture of him. She fogs the window with her breath and writes “amateur” on the glass.

In Murder Beach, Emma writes “please don’t kill me” on the glass (157). The killer vows to show her and her dog no mercy.

The narrative returns to Emma’s perspective. She takes Laika to the master bedroom and barricades the door. Outside, Kane shoots out the motion-sensor lights. She reflects that his shots are too quiet to be real, but she will later learn that he is using a pellet gun. Her polaroid of Kane slowly develops.

In Murder Beach, the photo becomes famous after Emma’s death.

Emma observes the photo and sees that Kane is wearing a fedora and a trench coat and carrying a sword. She thinks about the hat that she thought she saw in the bedroom. Meanwhile, Laika vomits up more of the poisoned chicken. Emma realizes that she can induce more vomiting with hydrogen peroxide. The bottle is under the kitchen sink, and Emma tells Laika that she is going to save her.

Emma walks through the house in darkness, not wanting to destroy her night vision. As she bumps against the kitchen island, she hopes that Deek will see her whiteboard message and help her. She also thinks about the sword that Kane carries. It reminds her of a poster in the bedroom of Jules’s teen son. (The narrative will later reveal that the man attacking her is really Jules’s son, Howard.) Now, the hydrogen peroxide isn’t where she left it under the kitchen sink. Suddenly, Kane shatters a living room window.

In Murder Beach, the killer addresses the reader and describes breaking the glass with his sword. When he enters the house, he knocks Emma’s e-reader onto the floor and is excited to begin the violence. Kane thinks about a samurai joke that he frequently posts under the screen name “HGKaneOfficial” and enters the kitchen, where Emma is hiding behind the island.

The narrative returns to Emma’s perspective. She can hear Kane breathing and walking toward her. He breaks a cup and wine bottle with his sword. As he approaches, she worries about Laika.

In Murder Beach, Kane swings his sword at the spot where he thinks she is hiding. However, she has moved from her spot behind the island.

Emma grabs salt and runs upstairs. She pushes a heavy armoire in front of the door and feeds Laika salt to induce vomiting and purge the poison. Kane stops trying to enter the door, which is effectively barricaded, and Emma feels that he has God-like knowledge of the house’s layout.

Emma takes Laika into the bathroom and hallucinates a conversation with Shawn. She remembers helping him paint a mountain for his train set and recalls his encouraging statement of “You can do it, Em” (185). She imagines that he would say the same thing to her right now. Emma wonders if she actually did drown herself and is simply dreaming everything that is happening. She also wonders if Kane is the devil. However, she affirms that she is still alive.

In Murder Beach, the narrator says that she “is now dead” (188). After Emma flees upstairs, Kane licks her cigarette butt as a way of being close to her lips. Suddenly, he sees a light outside.

Still in the bathroom, Emma can hear a vehicle approach. When the car door opens, she hears someone identify themselves as the police. She assumes that Deek called 911 for her and that the police are apprehending Kane, but this is far from the case. Laika vomits in Emma’s lap, and Emma thinks about how she wants to meet Deek for tea, in person, to thank him. Her ability to envision a future, even just one day beyond the current day, is a huge shift in her mental health.

In Murder Beach, Kane reveals that he impersonated a police officer when the delivery driver arrived.

In real life, the delivery driver, Jake Stanford, is wearing headphones, which aid in Kane’s deception. Emma realizes her mistake and arrives outside. She tells Kane to stop. Emma is finally able to see what Kane looks like as she approaches him. He motions for her to drop the knife that she is holding, and she obeys. He says, “Good girl” and pulls out a gun. Kane’s hand trembles.

In the book, Kane’s hand doesn’t tremble, and he claims to be a sociopath. He thinks about how fiction is sociopathic and smiles at Emma.

In real life, Emma reflects that his smile is creepy. He tells her that she says Shawn’s name in her sleep; he thinks that Shawn is dead. (Emma doesn’t tell him that Shawn is still alive, and the narrative does not reveal this fact until much later in the book.) Kane says that he is here to help Emma die by suicide. When a light comes on in Deek’s house, the delivery driver sees it and looks up. Kane uses his sword to injure Jake. Emma tells Kane to focus on her and leave the driver alone.

In Murder Beach, the killer considers Emma’s request but decides that no one will get out alive.

The perspective switches to Emma when Kane claims that he will let Jake go. Kane steps back and says, “He told me I had to kill you” (204). However, Kane will not reveal who this person is. (Later, the narrative reveals that the attacker is acting on Deek’s orders.) Now, Jake finds a rock and swings it at Kane’s face.

In Murder Beach, the narrator describes the killer’s obsession with swords. A description of Kane’s YouTube video reinforces this fact.

The narrative returns to Emma’s perspective as she watches Kane dismember Jake. She runs into the house and screams.

Emma recalls the first time she saw someone die, five months ago. Kane throws a piece of Jake’s body at the kitchen window and screams. Emma wishes that the sky were clear so that she could see the stars. She believes that Kane must have committed all the murders that he wrote about in his 16 novels.

In Murder Beach, Kane recalls killing Laura Birch in high school. He had a crush on her and sent her his writing. After reading his piece titled Semiautomatic, which was about a school shooter, she stopped talking to him. A month passed before Kane confronted her. Laura went missing, and he became a suspect, but there was not enough evidence to charge him with her murder. After Laura’s death, he kept some photos and some pieces of her body, like teeth and hair, as well as a short sword with her blood on it.

The narrative returns to Emma’s perspective. Deek sees her and tries to call 911, but he tells her on the whiteboard that his phone line is also cut. He advises her to run. Running reminds Emma of how a character in Murder Mountain died. Because she doesn’t want to leave Laika behind, she opts to stay inside. She uses improvised charades to ask Deek about his gun, but he writes that he doesn’t have any bullets. Emma wonders who ordered Kane to kill her. She briefly wonders if Deek is the culprit but dismisses this idea, deciding that Deek is a harmless old man.

On her whiteboard, Emma asks Deek where Kane is. As he searches with his telescope, Emma blocks the broken window with a sofa. She suggests that Deek drive out to find help.

In Murder Beach, Kane asserts that he disabled Deek’s vehicle.

The narrative returns to Emma’s perspective. She starts to write that Deek should run on foot. In Murder Beach, the killer asserts that Deek couldn’t make it to another house. In real life, Emma suggests that Deek run north and break into a summer home to use a phone. In the book, Kane asserts that he has cut up the phone lines to everyone near Emma, mainly because he could not figure out which cord was hers, so he cut them all.

From her perspective, Emma sees Deek write that they should fight Kane together. She agrees and fills up a pot to boil water for a weapon. Deek says that he will come over, but she asks him to stay in his house and keep track of Kane with the telescope. Emma looks through the toolbox in the basement for weapons. She is lightheaded because her grief has prevented her from eating much. She considers giving up and allowing Kane to kill her, but she is determined not to abandon Laika and Deek.

After putting the large pot on the stove to boil, Deek indicates that Kane is in the delivery van. Emma remembers that Jules ordered her a stun gun.

In Murder Beach, Kane gets in the van, tosses aside Emma’s package, not knowing that it contains a weapon, and hides the van.

Emma doesn’t think she can make it to the van and learn how to use the stun gun in time to stop Kane. Meanwhile, Deek writes that he is coming over. He also admits that he recognizes Kane as a fan who used to stalk him and that because Kane idolizes him, he may be able to help. Deek also apologizes. Emma is suspicious; she cannot believe that someone would kill another human over a bad review. Deek writes that Kane’s real name is Howard Grosvenor Kline.

Deek tells Emma that Kane (Howard) stalked Deek. Deek claims that he took out a restraining order against Kane, but Kane is now back and, as Deek writes on the board, “OLDER SMARTER ANGERIER” (238). Deek says that Kane is the worst writer he has ever met.

In Murder Beach, Kane claims to be a talented writer. He describes breaking into Deek’s house while Deek and his family are out of town. Kane was caught and arrested. He claims that this experience made him smarter.

The narrative returns to Emma’s perspective. Deek writes that he has lost sight of Kane in the house. Emma sees a figure behind Deek.

In Murder Beach, the narrator claims to be in the house with Deek. Emma tries to warn Deek that Kane is there, and Deek tells her to run. He grabs a letter opener and goes to face the figure.

When Deek turns on the light, he reveals that what Emma thought was a person was just Deek’s own clothes. Both Deek and Kane have a fedora. While Emma is distracted by watching Deek look through his house for Kane, Kane is able to get behind Emma and grab her hair. From the perspective of his book, he describes putting the sword’s blade to her throat.

Emma escapes Kane’s grasp, losing hair and her locket, which holds Shawn’s picture. As she and Kane struggle, her telescope lens is broken. Emma raises a hammer against Kane’s sword as Deek sets off fireworks, distracting Kane so that Emma can escape. In Murder Beach, the killer thinks he has cornered her in the basement. He even knows where the light switch is.

In Emma’s perspective, she hits Kane’s hand when he reaches for the light switch. He shrieks. In Murder Beach, the killer claims not to have made any noise at all and swings his sword into Emma’s face.

From Emma’s perspective, Kane’s sword is stuck in a column next to her face. (She planned to lead him down here so that his sword would get stuck and she would have an advantage.) Now, she runs upstairs. In Murder Beach, the narrator describes the injuries to his hand.

In Emma’s perspective, she now has a screwdriver and is waiting in the living room for Kane to round the corner. She wants to avenge the students in Murder Mountain, “Prelaw and Psych” (259). Deek continues to set off fireworks, and Emma considers trying to run to Deek’s house. Emma imagines Shawn rooting for her, just like he did when she painted the mountain. Then, she remembers that the mountain was destroyed after a pipe burst in the house; at the time, their relationship was struggling as they tried to have a baby. Now, Emma imagines Shawn saying, “I’ll meet you there” (258), the phrase they used to say to each other. She stabs the approaching man in the neck with the screwdriver.

Emma realizes that she has stabbed Deek, not Kane.